Techniques For Fiction writing-Part One
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Many books have been written on fiction technique and the chief excuse for the present addition to the number is the complexity of the subject. Its range is so wide, it calls for so many and so different capacities in one attempting to discuss it, that new work has more than a chance to meet at least two or three deficiencies in all other treatments.
I believe that the chief deficiency in most works on fiction the technique is that the author unconsciously has slipped from the viewpoint of a writer of a story to that of a reader.
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Now a reader without intention to try his own hand at the
game is not playing fair in studying technique, and a book on technique has no
business to entertain him.
Accordingly, I have striven to keep to the viewpoint
of one who seeks to learn how to write stories, and has made no attempt to
analyze the work of masters of fiction for the sake of the analysis alone.
Such analysis is
interesting to make, and also interesting to read, but it is not directly
profitable to the writer. It is indirectly profitable, of course, but it will
give very little direct aid to one who has a definite story idea and wishes to
be told the things he must consider in developing it and writing the story, or
to one who wishes to be told roughly how he should go about the business of
finding real stories.
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In fact, I believe
that discussion and analysis of perfect work has a tendency to chill the
enthusiasm of the beginning[8] writer. What he chiefly needs is to be told the
considerations he must hold in mind in conceiving, developing, and writing a
story. The rest lies with his own abilities and capacities to work
intelligently and to take pains.
Therefore the first part of this book takes up the problems
of technique in the order in which they present themselves to the writer.
Beginning with matters of conception, the discussion passes to matters of
construction and development, and finally to matters of execution, or rather
the writing of a story considered as a bare chain of events.
Then the matters of description, dialogue, the portrayal of
character and the precipitation of atmosphere are discussed, and lastly the
short story and novel, as distinct forms, are taken up.
Usually, the propositions necessary to be laid down require
no demonstration; they are self-evident. That is why a book on technique for the
writer need not indulge in the fine-spun analysis of perfect work.
Where analysis will
lend point to the abstract statement, I have made it, but my constant aim has
been not to depart from the viewpoint that the reader has in mind some idea of
his own and wishes to be told how to handle it.
Unquestionably literary dissection is useful in that it
gives the beginning writer familiarity with the terminology and processes of
the art, but the main object of a book on technique is to place the results of
analysis, directly stated, in a logical sequence.
I will note one other matter. A great part of the technique
of fiction writing concerns matters of conception and development which are
preliminary to actual writing. In fact, they are essentially and peculiarly the
technique of fiction.
The story that is not a justly ordered whole, with each part
in its due place and no part omitted, cannot have full effect, however[9] great
the strictly executive powers of its writer. Verbally faultless telling will
not save a story which is not logically built up and developed, either before
writing or in the process of writing.
The art of telling a story is largely the art of justly
manipulating its elements. The art of telling it with verbal perfection is not
so much a part of the strict technique of fiction writing as it is of the
general technique of writing.
Therefore, I have
made little attempt to discuss the general art of using words. For assistance
in studying the art of expression, the reader should turn to work on rhetoric.
The subject is too inclusive for adequate treatment here.
Moreover, it is debatable whether the art of verbal
expression can be studied objectively with any great profit. But the art of
putting a story together can be studied objectively with profit, and its
principles are subject to the direct statement.
I desire to acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. William R.
Kane, of The Editor Magazine, for much helpful criticism and many valuable
suggestions.
INTRODUCTION
"A work of art is first cloudily conceived in the mind;
during the period of gestation, it stands more clearly forward from these
swaddling mists put on expressive lineaments and becomes at length that most
faultless, but also, alas! that incommunicable product of the human mind, a
perfected design.
On the approach to
execution, all is changed.
The artist must now step down, don his working
clothes, and become the artisan. He now resolutely commits his airy conception,
his delicate Ariel, to the touch of matter; he must decide, almost in a breath,
the scale, the style, the spirit, and the particularity of execution of his
whole design."
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Thus Stevenson, in "A Note on Realism," takes it
for granted that the artist in pigments, stone, or words cannot reproduce until
he first has produced, cannot show a perfect work unless he paints, builds, or
writes along the lines of a perfected design.
One cannot dabble long at architecture or the graphic arts
without gaining a keen realization of the fact that conception in its elaborative
aspects is as much a part and phase of technique as the executive handling of
materials.
But the art of literature, and, more narrowly, the art of
fiction, deal with materials other than those employed in the other arts;
words, not colors or marble, nor yet sounds, are the resource of the story
teller to precipitate his conception in enduring form and words are at
once frank and mysterious things.
Their primary office
is to forward the common business of life; each has some meaning in itself,
more or less definite.
It results that the writer of a story who sets out with only
the merest glimmering of what he means to do in mind can produce a
superficially plausible work, work not too obviously misshapen, a work that
means something, at any rate, although his failure to trace a design to guide
his hand almost inevitably will prohibit his giving the basic conception most
effective expression.
And, since almost any sequence of words has some
significance, it also results that the writer of fiction who works at haphazard
may fail to discover that failure in his work as a whole is due to lack of
planning rather than to defective execution.
The mere grammatical coherence of a fictionally slipshod
piece of work is a shield between its writer's inquiring eye and its essential
defects.
The art of fiction is the art both of the tale and of the story, fictions that differ radically. Their most striking difference is stated
in the following pages; here I can only remark broadly that the tale is
episodal, consisting of a fortuitous series of incidents without essential
connection or relation except that they all happened to happen to them
characters, while the story is a whole in that each incident functions in the
development of a plot or dramatic problem.
If prevision and full
elaboration of his basic idea is essential to the writer of a tale, they are
doubly essential to the writer of a story, simply because a story is a whole
and the result of careful coordination of parts.
Even if the writer of some particular story has not worked
along the lines of a fully elaborated design, the story actually will manifest
co-ordination of parts or else be worthless. A story is more than a series of
incidents; it is a series of incidents significant in relation to character.
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Its writer cannot set
to work with an eye solely to the physical spectacle and follow after with his
pen; he must prepare his people as well as the events, a task of cunning
calculation. He must have an eye to many other matters, but this is not the
place to state them.
The matter of character is the matter significant here because the whole
difference between tale and story is made by the presence or absence of the relation between events and personality.
And it is certain
that the writer of a story cannot hope to do the best work if he postpones
until the moment of actual writing the task of molding and elaborating his the basic idea with a view to giving it maximum effect.
The task to express perfectly, in a verbal sense, is
difficult enough to claim the undivided attention of the ablest artist, but
undivided attention cannot be given the matter of verbal expression by a writer
who shapes his substance and picks his words at one and the same time. Either
word or substance must suffer.
Accordingly, to emphasize the necessity that the writer of
fiction give full shape and development to his design before writing, I have
stated the necessity and discussed technique itself under two heads, conceptive
or constructive technique and executive technique.
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To have carried this division rigorously through the whole book would have been neither possible nor profitable, for it would have
involved much repetition and confusion, but the various items of technique are
either largely conceptive and constructive or largely executive and the best
place to discuss each has not been difficult to determine.
It was only necessary
to contemplate the actual process of conceiving, developing, and writing a
story, and to take up in their order the problems that confront a writer of
fiction. The only matter which found no natural place, so approached, was that
of characterization, which is almost equally a matter[16] of construction and
of execution, so that discussion of it has been broken up to some extent.
This approach to technique is the natural approach, and has
been adopted for that reason. The more naturally and easily any study can be
conducted, the greater the results that will be achieved.
But there is a more
immediate reason for taking up the phases of technique in the order in which
they present themselves to a writer of fiction, thereby emphasizing the
existence and importance of the constructive phases of technique.
Briefly, it is that construction is at once easier and more important
to learn than execution. Perhaps a little argument in support of the statement
is called for.
It will not be questioned seriously that it is easier to
learn the main principles of construction than it is to learn or discover how
to write with finish and power.
It is entirely possible to state abstractly the principles
of construction, to grasp their reasons and implications from abstract
statement, and to apply them by a mere act of the intelligence in writing any
story.
But it is entirely impossible to state abstractly the
principles of writing with finish and power, or to learn to write so from any
mere discussion of the matter. The condition is illustrated by almost any
treatise on rhetoric, where half the text will be made up of examples transcribed
to lend some weight to the obviously—and necessarily—inadequate discussion.
How to write with finish and power can be learned only by
long-continued and intelligent practice, if it can be learned at all. Of
course, this is not to say that constant practice is not necessary to gain any
real facility and adequacy in applying the principles of construction.
The argument of the last paragraph is clinched by the fact
that of a thousand stories, all of which are well constructed and put together,
only a few or perhaps none will be written with any approach to real
literary power, in the verbal sense.
Of all the writers of to-day who can put
together a story in workmanlike fashion how many have the power of the telling
word? how many have even a style?
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I have yet to substantiate the assertion that construction
is more important for the writer of fiction to learn than execution, but the
task is easy. In the last analysis, the power of a story, that is, its power to
interest, depends upon its matter, the spectacle it presents.
If the whole conception is justly elaborated and properly
put together, it will have very nearly full effect, even though its writer does
not give it perfect verbal expression, provided the verbal precipitation of the
thing is not too shamelessly inadequate.
Perfect verbal expression is necessary to give a properly
constructed story maximum effect; it is not necessary to give it approximate
effect. But perfect verbal expression will not save a story that is misshapen
and distorted through lack of proper construction.
These considerations strongly urge the writer of fiction to
master the principles of constructing a story before he frets about the nuances
of expression, and just as strongly they impose upon a book on technique the
obligation to discuss matters of construction at length and also to discuss
them as such.
The book which does not explicitly insist that certain matters
are matters of construction, therefore to be performed before writing, is very
apt to mislead. It is a defect from which too many books on fiction technique
are not free, and one that I have tried to avoid.
How comprehensive and inclusive are the principles of
construction the first half of this book attempts to show. Here it is enough to
state that they embrace matters so different as the manipulation of possible
incidents in the interest of climax, and the preparation[18] or building up of
the people of a story that its situations may have real dramatic value for a
reader.
The writer of fiction
who merely writes cannot hope to provide by any instinct for these and the
other matters of construction, and no power in his words can fortify essential
weakness in his matter.
Style, literary power, the right word in the right place—all
will resist the tooth of time, but no one will preserve a story from the
contagion of decay at the heart. Indeed, in the juster sense, a shapely design
is the necessary foundation or basis for perfect writing, which is no mere
varnish.
In this present era of magazine literature the chances are
that nine out of ten actual or prospective writers of fiction who take up a
book on technique for serious study will do so with an eye to the short story.
And since this book is for the practitioner of the art, not
for the mere reader of fiction, I have felt myself under obligation to discuss
the short story and its peculiar technique with some approach to adequacy.
Statement of the way the short story has been approached may serve to align the
reader's mind with the argument.
In the first place, the short story is yet a story, a
fiction, so that the general technique of fiction is applicable to it, with
suitable modifications here and there. In the second place, the short story is
a distinct type of fiction in that it embodies a plot or dramatic problem and
is brief enough to read at one not very prolonged sitting.
It is at once slighter and more pointed or direct than the
long story of plot, the novel or romance. The result is that all its processes,
particularly the process of characterization, must be conducted in a fashion
more swift and summary than in a long story, and the difference is the whole of
the difference in the technique of the two forms.
Unfortunately, a discussion of the peculiar technique of the
short story cannot confine itself to this difference without failing to clear
away the many misconceptions that becloud the subject.
A good deal has been written on the short story, and, since
there is really not very much to say, a good many writers have been led into
nonsense. With so much misconception in the air, I have felt that it would be
useful to state a tenable theory of the short story, and have attempted to do so in the chapter on the form. The matter will be
found there and cannot be reproduced here, but brief statement of the argument
will complete the foretaste of the book.
Since the short story is a story, at least, it may be
divided and classified, like all stories, into stories of character, stories of
complication of incident, and stories of atmosphere, that is, into stories
which emphasize or stress the element of personality, the element of incident,
or the element of setting.
But the truly significant division of the short story
into types, the division which it will be most directly profitable for the
writer of fiction to realize, is twofold, not triplicate, and is the division
into the dramatic short story and the short story of atmosphere or unity of
emotional effect on a reader.
These two types are as different as black and white, and the
misconception noted above consists in confusing them.
The short story of atmosphere is Poe's sort of story; he
said something definite and true about his peculiar art; but later writers,
critics rather, have padded and distorted his words to cover the whole field of
the short story.
The general result is much printed folly, and the specific
result for the short story writer is that he is continually urged, commanded,
entreated, and advised to invest his work with some mysterious
"unity."
The advice is sound if the[20] short story of atmosphere,
the short story of unity or totality of emotional effect, is meant; the short
story of atmosphere is a mysterious and subtle unity in that its people and
happenings are curiously of a piece with its setting, serving to deepen or
intensify the emotional effect of the setting on a reader.
But, applied to the
dramatic short story, the advice is unsound, for the dramatic short story may
and usually does involve much diversity and contrast in its three elements of
people, events, and setting. The only sense in which it can be said to be a
unity is that it is verbally coherent, a single story. The single story may
involve radically different people, happenings, and scenes.
The positive evil tendency in telling the short story writer
to seek to invest his work with "unity" is that if he follows the
advice his material will be restricted, and he will write stories too simple
really to interest, apart from the appeal of their characters. And this point
of interest brings up another aspect of this book which I would mention.
The last chapter states a general theory or philosophy of
fiction which it will prove most profitable for the writer of fiction to grasp,
however imperfectly I may have stated it. The theory is not profound, in the
sense that it is mysterious, being merely the theory which is implied in the
content and aim of the art of fiction itself.
The content of fiction is man and what he may possibly or
even conceivably experience; the aim of fiction is to interest, in Stevenson's
words, "the one excuse and breath of art—charm.
" How much is implied in the content and aim of fiction
I have tried to show in my closing pages, but the theory there stated is the
guiding principle of the whole book, and any value it may have derives from
such unforced handling of the subject. Apart from the merit of my own work, one
thing at least is certain.
If commentators on
the[21] art of fiction generally would deal less in "isms" and seek
less to display their profundity and critical acumen, the actual writer of
fiction might read them with some profit. As it is, the greatest single danger
threatening the practitioner of the art is that his eagerness for all that pertains
even remotely to his trade may lead him to take seriously the empty thunders of
the schools and to forget that his business is to interest and captivate Mr.
and Mrs. Smith, simply that.
To sum up, my desire has been to write a book that would be
of some practical use, at least practically suggestive to the writer of
fiction; therefore the only natural way to approach technique has been adopted,
and I have indulged in the analysis only when the analysis would be useful in
itself or would serve to clear away misconception. In other words, the book has
been written strictly for the writer, not the reader of fiction, and that
implies much.
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I hope you enjoyed this and if you have any questions leave a comment below.Thanks!!
ErvinG
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